(WTNH) – If you’ve ever opened your fridge to find spoiled food, you’ve probably felt the disappointment of having to throw out groceries you spent your hard-earned money.

But there are steps you can take to make sure it doesn’t go to waste. We are stretching your dollar with the best way to organize your refrigerator.

When getting home from the supermarket, it’s tempting to quickly put away your groceries, but according to Consumer Reports Daniel Wroclawski, how you organize your fridge matters.

“It’s absolutely worth just spending a few more minutes, putting things in the right places to really maximize the life of your your food and really save you money,” Wroclawsi said.

Wroclawski says each section of your fridge has varying climate conditions. For example, in temperature performance tests they noticed the door usually gets a few degrees warmer than other areas. He advises storing things like butter, condiments, juice, soda, water, and even cooking oils there.

“So we really advise people to not use it to store things like milk and eggs, even though it’s really tempting because they have dedicated compartments for those items in the door. But don’t put your milk and eggs there,” Wroclawski said.

Then there are the crisper drawers.

“Many crisper drawers have humidity controls that you can either switch them to high humidity or low humidity,” Wroclawski explained. “But even if your your refrigerator doesn’t have those adjustments, you still want to think about separating your high humidity items and your low humidity items.”

Low-humidity items include apples, avocados, grapes, mushrooms, and peppers. Keep those separate from high-humidity items like broccoli, carrots, green onions, and leafy greens.

The lower shelf usually located in the middle of the refrigerator tends to be much cooler. Wroclawski recommends storing more temperature-sensitive items there like milk, eggs, raw meat, and fish.

Since the upper shelves are a bit warmer, they’re best for jelly, peanut butter, yogurt, and leftovers. Leftovers. are of course already cooked so you don’t have to worry as much about them spoiling as raw items will.